The new £1 Coin - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenewpoundcoin.com/ <comment><USER2> How the "hidden high security feature"* in the new £1 coin works is covered here:

[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/53673/how- does-...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/53673/how-does-the- authentication-in-the-new-uk-£1-coin-work)

* Royal Mint's new anti-counterfeiting technology, which can be authenticated by high-speed automated detection, was called Integrated Secure Identification Systems (ISIS) - but for obvious reasons, they've stopped using that name.

<comment><USER3> K, damn.

<comment><USER4> Per the article, one in thirty of these coins are counterfeit.

<comment><USER5> Occasionally you do get a pound coin that is slightly heavy. I guess those are the counterfeit ones. Bit hard for the layman to tell.

<comment><USER6> It's not too difficult for most of them.

Drop it edgeways on the table. Most counterfeit ones don't give the proper 'clunk', maybe the material isn't right.

Or, the colour or alignment would be bad, or they'd appear more worn than normal.

I don't think the 1/30 fakes are evenly spread around the country. When I lived in London, they were much more common than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a UK citizen, it stuns me that one-in-thirty pound coins is a fake because a) i can't imagine how it's possibly worth it b) out of the thousands of pound coins i must have handled, I've never spotted a fake - they must be very good. Still, the new coin certainly looks nice!

<comment><USER8> > I've never spotted a fake - they must be very good

Some regions seem to get more than others, I used to see large numbers in the change I got in London.

The quickest "tell" for me is the lettering on the edge. Some of it is shockingly poor quality and almost looks like someone took a soldering iron to draw it on.

The next time a machine rejects one of your pound coins, take another look at it, there's a good chance it's fake.

EDIT: Here's the first page I found looking for example images:

[http://www.larkinweb.co.uk/miscellany/counterfeit_one_pound_...](http://www.larkinweb.co.uk/miscellany/counterfeit_one_pound_coins.html)

To my eye they look really shonky.

Edit II: A couple more examples:

[http://www.cryst.co.uk/category/fake-pound- coins/](http://www.cryst.co.uk/category/fake-pound-coins/)

[http://www.employees.org/~tw/quids/quids.html](http://www.employees.org/~tw/quids/quids.html)

FinalEditIPromiseNoReally:

Check out this stack, they're almost comically bad:

[http://blog.alism.com/wp- content/2006/08/coinstack.jpg](http://blog.alism.com/wp- content/2006/08/coinstack.jpg)

(found on this blog: [http://blog.alism.com/fake-one-pound-coins-part- three/](http://blog.alism.com/fake-one-pound-coins-part-three/))

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Thanks for the links.

I have indeed had some pound coins which were tatty round the edges and had to be pushed through a self-service checkout several times or wouldn't even go through at all. I still hadn't realised they might be fake, though.

I have noticed that a lot of old 10p coins are noticeably a lot thinner (presumably worn down rather than starting out thinner) than new ones. Is this as it should be or should I start looking at these with suspicion too?

<comment><USER10> _I have noticed that a lot of old 10p coins are noticeably a lot thinner (presumably worn down rather than starting out thinner)_

Prior to about 2010, 5p and 10p coins really were thinner. They were changed from copper/nickel alloy (Cupronickel) to nickel-plated steel to reduce costs. But in order to maintain the same weight, the coins had to be made thicker.

<comment><USER9> Didn't know that - thanks!

You can get answers on so many topics on HN...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> For any interested in the related costs:

[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/19/cost-new- pound...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/19/cost-new-pound-coin- business)

Seems like there are £45m worth of counterfeit coins in circulation, but the switch may cost over £100 million.

____

EDIT: The percent of fake coins in circulation appears to be in flux, which makes me wonder what methods they use to estimate the fakes in circulation, if they use controls like injecting known fakes into the count to see if they are spotted, if the sample is truly random, the maths is correct, etc.:

1% 2004 [1]

3.03% May 2014 [2]

2.55% May 2015 [2]

Of note is that the Royal Mint states in the 2016 annual report that the last survey for fakes was in May 2015, but the report was issued in July 2016, which means at least as of that date they failed to do the annual survey; or at least publish the results.[3]

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10707540/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10707540/How- can-I-spot-a-fake-1-coin.html)

[2] [http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit- one-p...](http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound- coins)

[3] [http://www.royalmint.com/~/media/Files/AnnualReports/ar_2015...](http://www.royalmint.com/~/media/Files/AnnualReports/ar_2015_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER11> So there was no point in doing it? This seems super weird for a financial institution that should be looking at hard data; maybe they did some analysis about the increasing ease of forgery?

<comment><USER12> Not sure if this is flawed, but I want to attempt an analogy that felt right to me.. Let's say they figured out catching a thief cost £500 and it became public knowledge the police wouldn't investigate any theft under £500. The cost of transitioning to the £1 seems worth it to prevent further abuse.

<comment><USER13> > Let's say they figured out catching a thief cost £500 and it became public > knowledge the police wouldn't investigate any theft under £500.

Is this not already true? When my laptop was stolen, I was advised "don't bother reporting it to the police".

<comment><USER14> It might well be true, but the police themselves can't say that it's true in an irrevocable way. The recent indie film "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" is an entertaining consideration of this scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Watching the video - I was waiting for John Ive voice at the end saying "it's the best coin we've ever made"

</comment><comment><USER16> > "Approximately one in thirty £1 coins in circulation is a counterfeit."

That took me completely by surprise. Is there really that much of a market in counterfeit coins? The profit margins just seem so modest relative to counterfeit bills.

<comment><USER8> > That took me completely by surprise. Is there really that much of a market > in counterfeit coins? The profit margins just seem so modest relative to > counterfeit bills.

If no one's checking for counterfeit coins, and the users themselves don't know they exist, it sounds like a pretty awesome opportunity for the counterfeiters.

Just take a look at the number of comments here saying the same thing as you - from a counterfeiter's perspective, it sounds pretty ideal.

<comment><USER17> But, what do you _do_ with your counterfeit coins? You've invested all this money and effort in minting equipment, but it would look extremely weird to spend more than like 20 at once.

Unless they can fool machines, it seems very inefficient.

<comment><USER18> My best bet, after mulling this over for a few minutes is that the fake coins are sold in bulk to people who handle lots of small change - kiosks, fast-food joints etc - then they just mix them in with the real money in the register for giving change.

<comment><USER19> What I want to know is why would you counterfeit (serious charge) when you can use a similar looking coin? For example

I was given a South African 5 Rand coin in my change in Amsterdam (should have been a €2 coin):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5-za- rand.JPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5-za-rand.JPG)

Broke a 20 getting intoxicated in a bar/coffeeshop, then bought a kebab after on my walk back. Kebab shop was only place I got metal change that night.

I didn't notice until the next day when a coffee place threw a fuss when I used it to pay for my espresso.

I suspect they often mix them in for drunk tourists.

<comment><USER18> That idea has been tried out before with great success - in the 1880s.(0)

Adjusted only for changes in the CPI, Josh Tatum netted $121 in today's dollars every time he spent a gold-plated nickel.

(0) [https://www.pcgs.com/News/The-Man-Who-Could-Stop-The- Mint](https://www.pcgs.com/News/The-Man-Who-Could-Stop-The-Mint)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Funnily, the new "most secure" pound will be introduced one day before a pretty big event, Mrs. May's Article 50 invocation, which widely predicted to devalue the pound significantly.

You might buy new pounds as "secure" coins, but you'll probably some percentage of their value the next day...

<comment><USER21> Article 50 has been priced into the markets for months, I'd be very surprised to see any significant movement.

<comment><USER22> You'd think so, but every stage in the process so far has led to another drop, at least temporarily, even though they've all be widely trailed beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another possible recent security feature is a polymer ring: [http://news.coinupdate.com/germany-introduces-next- generatio...](http://news.coinupdate.com/germany-introduces-next-generation- polymer-ring-circulation-coin-for-2016/)

<comment><USER24> It's super cool, but this coin is not used in general circulation and is more or less only a collectors item.

<comment><USER25> That seems weird. Why would they spend 10 years of research to produce a one- off collectors item?

<comment><USER26> To demonstrate feasibility and estimate costs. The tech could then eventually be rolled out but since Germany is part of the EU for EU-wide legal tender all mints need to switch: "standard" euro coins have a common design and reverse, and a national obverse (with some restrictions).

<comment><USER27> Nitpick, but you mean the Eurozone specifically.

<comment><USER26> Guilty as charged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For a moment I thought/hoped the UK would introduce an official cryptocurrency...

<comment><USER29> I kinda hoped that they'd include something like an RFID chip with something like a certificate inside, signed by the royal mint (Turkish government recently switched IDs to something like that).

That'd allow verifying every single new coin (unless it is damaged to the level of breaking the rfid chip, but I suppose that's not that easy).

It'd also enable tracking. I kinda regret that idea now. BUT if used responsibly, that can significantly reduce the counterfeiting by the means of somehow cloning the RFID chip (which wouldn't be simple if done properly -- there aren't any successful attacks on proper implementations of stuff like mifare desfire EV1/EV2 afaik). A coin was used on a market on london on 10am and with an ATM on Glasgow on 10:30am? Yeah, flag that coin down.

<comment><USER30> _" Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future."_

So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin?

<comment><USER29> > So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin?

That's a good point, I completely oversaw that.

<comment><USER31> I don't think it's entirely unfeasible, the entire coin could act as the antenna (instead of shielding one, that is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Coin has WiFi and a microphone and sends data to the nearest surveillance spot if it is in range.

<comment><USER33> If they weren't metallic, it wouldn't be a bad idea to put some RFID in them, or even set some secret handshake to automatically detect false coins.

<comment><USER34> There is likely an embedded known hash/serial number/other identifier in the U/V signature for exactly this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It reminds me of the old threepenny (prounounced "thrupny") bit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threepence_%28British_coin%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threepence_%28British_coin%29)

<comment><USER36> The Royal Mint are actually selling a commemorative set that includes the new £1 along with a old Threepence coin.

[http://www.royalmint.com/shop/h/hisoneth](http://www.royalmint.com/shop/h/hisoneth)

<comment><USER37> Because of the increase in traffic to this page I was actually put into a queue before I could view the page, how very British.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow: _" Approximately one in thirty £1 coins in circulation is a counterfeit."_

I have about a dozen £1 coins in my informal 'collection of currency from other places' bag and it looks like 2 of them are probably counterfeit (at least by the standards of the Royal Mint) one clearly is, the date and back picture don't match, the other has fairly poor milling around it.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the > coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future.

"security through obscurity" as a feature?

<comment><USER40> What's even the benefit of anti-counterfeiting measures that people don't know about? It doesn't matter if you fail a test that nobody knows to run.

Presumably some people will know about it, but who? If banks are the only places that can detect a fake, for example, does that gain you anything?

I suppose you can do something like "ah, this bank is getting a lot of fake coins, which means they're probably getting injected somewhere in the local area, maybe let's interview some people who've been cashing them in and see if there are any businesses they all frequent". Might be valuable.

Something I've missed?

<comment><USER41> Perhaps that's the point. They have a secret method for checking the authenticity of a coin such that counterfeiters do not know to imitate. This doesn't help the population to distinguish counterfeits, but it may help the government more easily keep track of the ratio of counterfeit coins out there.

<comment><USER42> So why mention it at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What happens if they have to remove the thistle and the shamrock after Brexit?

<comment><USER44> Why Brexit? Do you mean Scottish Independence?

<comment><USER45> Some would say those two are linked.

<comment><USER44> If that was the intent, why not just mention SI directly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Some of the dual metal build coins suffer from faults when they are exposed to cold environments. Once can test for this by placing the coin inside a freezer and observing one of the metals shrink to the point where it disconnects from the other part of the coin.

There are much older examples of latent image technology on coins, for example Russian 10 ruble circa year 2000 (look at the middle area of the '0' character): [https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/coin-rubles-russian- commemor...](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/coin-rubles-russian- commemorative-edition-31451612.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER47> It looks like a nicer version of the 1 euro coin. I like that the coin isn't round but 12-sided, which will certainly help visually impaired people use the coin. I wonder if they will introduce a new 6-sided 50p coin.

<comment><USER48> Euro Coins are actually designed to be distiguishable by blind people, they have different edges and sizes. I once was at a blindness awareness workshop and it is just one of those things you usually don't think about it.

<comment><USER6> So are the British coins, and personally, I think they're a lot better -- the seven-sided 20p and 50p are much easier to 'feel' than the 20¢ and 50¢.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Just curious, has anyone any insight into what that "hidden high security feature is"?

<comment><USER49> I think it's some kind of radio signal transceiver, because I saw a video where they talk about detecting it at high speed from a small distance as coins pass through a system.

<comment><USER50> That seems expensive, and easy to find by cutting one apart. I suspect it's something about the metal composition, detected with spectroscopy.

<comment><USER51> It could be a passive radio device, maybe just a loop of ferromagnetic material that gives a particularly noticeable electromagnetic response when excited at a certain radiofrequency.

<comment><USER52> A 1 uCi radioactive source is exempt in the USA yet quite easily detectable.

I suspect sooner or later someone is going to try radioactive currency.

I'm so old that when I went to uni we did a neutron activation of silver experiment in physics class because the half life of whatever isotope of silver was about a minute, so after an hour of lab you could put the coin back in your pocket. I don't know if they'd let college kids play with either a solid silver quarter from a few decades ago (probably worth a couple bucks today) OR a low level neutron source today. I could see picking some very obscure isotope of some obscure metal and dissolving it into the metal of the coin and if your xray metal analysis machine that scrapyards have (a kilobuck ish cost in a hand held device) detects the proper amount of iridium or whatever or a simple neutron activation followed by gamma spectrometer shows the right isotope in there...

Aside from spontaneous emissions and activation reactions, there are some weird cross sections out there. Whatever's irresistable to thermal neutrons thats used in reactors, probably a cadmium alloy, could be the core of a coin, and then blasting boring thermal neutrons that are semi-transparent to fakes but the cadmium core coins would look pitch black from eating all the neutrons. Or play the opposite game and make the coins out of pure neutron- transparent zirconium and only the neutron transparent coins are legit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is it a curve of constant width like the 20p and 50p? If its sides are straight it cannot be.

Also from wiki:

> The new design is intended to make counterfeiting more difficult, via an > undisclosed hidden security feature, called 'iSIS' (Integrated Secure > Identification Systems). [1]

Huh.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_\(British_coin\))

<comment><USER54> The coin does appear to be a Reuleaux solid, which was a relief to me. British coins are some of the most common Reuleaux solids in the world.

The sides are not straight; they are curved outwards. The curve is defined by an arc of a circle whose center is the opposite corner on the coin.

It's a neat class of shapes! My dive into them came while researching the rotary Wankel engine (rotors are roughly Reuleaux triangles)

<comment><USER55> But with an even number of sides (12 in the new coin), can that work?

<comment><USER54> It can not. Reuleaux solids must have an odd number of vertices, or they indeed don't work. It would appear that I didn't have my brain fully on this morning.

To apply the principle of Reuleaux geometry to a regular shape with an even number of vertices, you'd make arcs tangent to the point in question, extending in a curve that increases the coin's diameter as the arc gets longer. The arc would come to an end in a point midway to the next point, where it would intersect with that point's arc. You'd have a star-shaped solid where all geometry external to the inscribed circle are tapered triangles. Kind of neat, but it would be tough to put through a vending machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What I don't get is why we need coins anymore? Can't they just make £1 pound note same to the £5 one? I am always annoyed when I got coins on me and I never pay attention to them. Why not make £1 worth more by making it a note? Why not move away from notes nowadays? Is there any specific reason to that?

Is there just too much metal sitting around that they thought that would be an ok use of it?

<comment><USER57> We _used_ to have pound notes, and they're still technically in circulation in Scotland (although I've never seen one). According to wikipedia they were withdrawn because:

"Part of the reason for this change was that notes, on average, lasted only nine months in general circulation, while coins could last forty years or more. The government also believed that the growing vending industry would benefit from the introduction of a one pound coin."

Maybe the economics have changed with polymer notes. But the BoE inflation calculator tells me that the £1 notes withdrawn (in 1984 money) would be worth about £3 today. So maybe the fiver is next.

Then there's the lunatics that want to abolish physical money altogether...

<comment><USER58> > So maybe the fiver is next.

Something like that is already being discussed on the continent.

The memorial 5€ coin recently (which is legal tender) wasn't just that, but it was also a test if a 5€ coin would be accepted, and doable.

<comment><USER59> We do also have memorial £5 coins here in the UK although I don't know if they are a test for anything, as there have been quite a few over the years. A common gift for people as they are quite large with nice designs on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the > coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future.

I bet there's an RFID in each coin that uniquely identifies each one. If true, it'd also let them (or a thief!) identify the total value of the coins jingling in your pocket.

> Approximately one in thirty £1 coins in circulation is a counterfeit.

That seems incredibly high! Anyone have comparable stats for US dollar bills or 1 Euro coins?

> The legal tender status of the round £1 coin will be withdrawn on 15th > October 2017. From this date shops will no longer accept these coins, but > you will still be able to take them to your bank. We would encourage you to > use your coins or return them to your bank before 15th October.

Six-months is a pretty short window for something like this.

What prevents a shop from accepting the coins after Oct 15th and then _they_ take it to the bank?

Also, how does the 1/30 fraud number impact the returns of the current pound notes?

<comment><USER61> How would the RF get past the metal casing?

<comment><USER60> Could be a ring on the outside between the two layers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Many commenters in this thread are speculating on how counterfeiters are inserting the, apparently large volume of, counterfeit coins. Maybe one source is actually unrepudible /merchants/. In dispensing change to customers, market participants it would seem be less likely to scrutinize the coinage.

<comment><USER8> > Many commenters in this thread are speculating on how counterfeiters are > inserting the, apparently large volume of, counterfeit coins

I've written elsewhere that I reckon other criminal channels might be in use.

If you offer your street level drug dealers a choice of 1,000 pounds in "real" money or 2,000 in "fake," (or a mixture of them both) that'd probably do the job.

I'm working off the assumption that there's the exact same problem with distributing drugs.

Like, what would you do with a kilo or two of cocaine just lying around? Get many smaller dealers to handle the problem for you instead and make their money along the way.

If you also have some fake money lying around, I can't see any reason why you wound't try to combine the two.

<comment><USER63> This doesn't work because "your street level drug dealers" pay you, not the other way around. They get paid by keeping a portion of the proceeds, or of the drugs.

It works if you need to employ petty criminals for jobs other than sales, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Isn't it 14 sides?

<comment><USER65> Hahahah. I guess technically it is, nice catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> That coin is a beauty. It looks like it would be a denomination much higher than £1.

As someone who collected coins a child, I've been a tad disappointed by some of the newer designs coming out of the US Mint. Some are classy, others seem a bit goofy.

But this new pound coin is very tasteful. Well done, Royal Mint!

<comment><USER34> US Mint's seeming priority is cost cutting in metals rather than counterfeit coins, since our paper money is so simple I think counterfeiters are focused on that in the lower denominations..

UK notes are much more sophisticated even for the lower denominations, so probably there is more focus is on coins..

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> "The pound won't be round for much longer" is a pretty awful tagline, I'm not sure they realised what this sounds like...

<comment><USER68> The new coin is still called "pound", so indeed the statement makes no sense.

<comment><USER35> It won't be round though, it'll be dodecahedral. It makes perfect sense, but has two possible meanings.

<comment><USER69> Yes he knows; he's saying that the pun is a bit shit because only one of the two meanings is actually true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Canada has an 11-sided 1 dollar coin (the loonie) and a bimetallic 2 dollar coin (the toonie). This new £1 coin is basically a mash-up of the two.

Fair warning: People are going to put these things in pneumatic presses, hit them with sledge-hammers, etc. and then claim their brand new £1 coins are defective and "just fell apart". You should probably ignore these people. I'd be very surprised if the Royal Mint hadn't talked to the Canadian Mint and made sure they know how to make these things absolutely bomber.

<comment><USER21> The UK has been using bimetallic coins (£2 coin) since 1998.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_pounds_(British_coin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_pounds_\(British_coin\))

<comment><USER71> The bimetallic Toonie from Canada came out in 1996, but Italy beat everyone with their 500 Lire in 1982

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Is counterfeiting coins very lucrative?

<comment><USER73> From my other comment above:

We know 1 in 30 £1 coins are counterfeit.

Take the amount of £1 coins in circulation. Sum the value. Divide by 30. Equals the market in counterfeit coins.

From [http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation- coin-...](http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation-coin-mintage- figures) £1 are 1,671.328 £m / 30 = 55.71 £m

The market in counterfeit coins is therefore over 55 million pounds. This is, however the cumulative, total value of the market and not per year.

<comment><USER74> That doesn't really answer the question though. Is all the effort to create a fake 1 GBP coin worth it? Unless you have access to the right equipment, I can't imagine it is based on the effort to make each coin.

If you can make 8x1 GBP coins a hour, then you clear a cool 64 GBP each day. Better than nothing (and tax free!), but there are a lot of jobs that pay better than that.

<comment><USER75> Well yeah, you'd buy a stamping press and mint 10k/day.

I fear HN underestimates the amount of work people will do to avoid getting a boring (legal) job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Looks a bit like the failed US Susan B Anthony $1 coin. [https://en.numista.com/catalogue/photos/etats- unis/g1288.jpg](https://en.numista.com/catalogue/photos/etats-unis/g1288.jpg)

<comment><USER77> That failed because people don't like to carry coins, they prefer bills.

In the UK they don't have a 1 pound bill, forcing people to only use coins.

Coins are cheaper for the government since they last much longer.

So if you were a government, which would you pick: What your people want, or what's cheaper for you?

<comment><USER78> Note that the people often may directly want one thing, but also want indirectly what is cheaper for government, since they also usually don't want to pay more taxes, and do want government to do things.ib other domains that are constrained if it spends more than necessary in the domain under immediate consideration.

Government officials really have no other reason to care about "cheaper for government", since it's not their money anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Why not make the new £1 coin Euro compatible? Despite Brexit and all, it would make so much sense to share the same dimensions for the pound and the Euro.

Old pound: diameter 22.5 mm, thickness 3.15 mm.

New pound: diameter 22.63 - 23.43mm [1], thickness 2.8 mm.

Euro: diameter 23.25 mm, thickness 2.33 mm.

So close and yet so different! Why??!?

Edit: Okay, I'm not sure why I saw "so much sense" in having the pound and the Euro the same size. I go to the UK often and hate having different coin sizes in my pockets, but obviously the pound and the Euro aren't the same value, so there's no real reason they should be of the same size...

[1] Since the new pound isn't round but dodecagonal, the diameter isn't constant; the smallest value is the diameter of the incircle and the other value, the diameter of the circumcircle.

<comment><USER80> Because then vending machines would accept Euro coins as well as pound coins and you would be able to obtain goods for 60%(?) of the asking price??

<comment><USER81> Modern vending machines are not so easily fooled.

But, the old UK 5 pence and German 1 mark coins had quite similar dimensions, and were made from the same material, so vending machines at that time were fooled by the 5p, which was worth much less than the mark. I understand that truckloads of coins were sent back to Britain as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> So is the 'hidden high security feature' NFC? Something similar?

</comment><comment><USER83> How much lighter is the new coin? I have to say, the old £1 coin is my favorite I have ever seen in the world. It had a great heft/weight/size to it.

</comment><comment><USER84> After two pints it won't be distinguishable from € coin, many people have both in pockets, it's already hard for < 1 €/£ :(

<comment><USER85> Two pints of _what?_ Tequila? What in God's name do you have on tap over there, that a mere two pints gets you so blind you can't tell coins apart?

<comment><USER84> Poor sight from programming probably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> That looks neat. Never seen a coin before that changes based on how you look at it. I kinda want one, even though I'm in the US.

<comment><USER87> I'll post you one if you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> How is this claim substantiated ? I fail to see any difference from the coins that are widely available around the world.

</comment><comment><USER89> Made to look like the 1Euro coin to ease the transition to Euro currency in the future, I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER90> > Approximately one in thirty £1 coins in circulation is a counterfeit.

That's staggering.

</comment><comment><USER91> Will they have to replace it as soon as the Queen dies? Seems wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER92> It's really pretty. I wish euros would be designed that well.

</comment><comment><USER93> I'll be glad to see the back of the old Thatcher.

</comment><comment><USER94> At first I thought this was some Euro-related prank.

</comment><comment><USER95> i like how they on longer mention the name of the technology inside it which when it was first announced was to be called "ISIS"

</comment><comment><USER96> I don't like it.

[http://www.thesunsetlounge.co.uk/Images/PoundedPound.jpg](http://www.thesunsetlounge.co.uk/Images/PoundedPound.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER97> I like the optimism of keeping symbols of Ireland and Scotland on the coin. Of course, those could become ironic in the not-to-distant. The leek seems safe, though.

</comment><comment><USER98> Is my business ready? Why wouldn't it?

<comment><USER99> Many reasons.

\- You have vending machines which only take the old coins \- You haven't sat down with your retail employees to make certain they can identify the security features of the new coins \- You don't have sorting machines which can handle the new coins so that you can have an accurate inventory of your coinage \- You don't have a policy in place for removing the old coins from circulation

Those are just off the top of my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> > a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from > counterfeiting in the future.

Reminds me of the Indian Rupee 2000 'gps feature'

</comment><comment><USER101> Designed in California. /s

</comment><comment><USER102> Coins?

How much longer will we be using coins for?

<comment><USER103> Hopefully a long time, unless you are happy with your spending being mediated and controlled by a third party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I wonder how many people are going to try to push out the middle the way they do to the toonie.

</comment><comment><USER105> It's interesting that they chose .com versus .co.uk for their domain.

</comment><comment><USER106> I see by the design that they're already planning for Br-re-entry.

</comment><comment><USER42> dot com? Why?

<comment><USER107> The Royal Mint is a state-owned enterprise and not a government department. For a start, they produce currency for other countries directly, which is not something the government would want to do.

<comment><USER42> This coin is being produced for the UK.

<comment><USER107> Yes, but they also produced coins and notes for 39 other countries in 2015-16: [http://www.royalmint.com/~/media/Files/AnnualReports/ar_2015...](http://www.royalmint.com/~/media/Files/AnnualReports/ar_2015_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER42> The website is not for the Royal Mint, which of course needs a dot com address, this website is for the new UK pound coin. Why does the new UK pound coin, with a UK audience, not use a UK domain?

<comment><USER107> Oh, oops, hadn't realised what you meant. Presumably seeing as it's not a company though a .info would be more appropriate though?

<comment><USER42> .info would also be non-uk.

There is the .uk domain in the uk, so www.newpoundcoin.uk would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> They probably should have continued using the letters. The more things called ISIS the less important those letters are to any one thing, including the terrorist org.

<comment><USER109> The "terrorist org" never used those letters in the first place. The acronym in Arabic is "Daesh". ISIS is an English-language acronym formed from a (bad[1]) translation of the group's name. Think about it: why would a decidedly muslim organization name itself in a foreign language after a forgotten infidel goddess?

[1] Most western journalists rapidly moved off onto ISIL, which is a better translation (the name never referred to Syria the nation, but the geographical area better captured by "Levant"). Really only the right-wing sources continue to use "ISIS", presumably because it sounds more like a Bond villain's outfit.

<comment><USER110> If we want to make them angry we should be calling them daesh.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/09/words- matter-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/09/words-matter-isis- war-use-daesh/V85GYEuasEEJgrUun0dMUP/story.html)

<comment><USER49> Calling them a nasty name? Do you really think that's a mature and effective strategy in this situation?

<comment><USER110> Of course it shouldn't be the only thing we do, far from it, but as Sun Tzu said:

"If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him"

<comment><USER111> How many ISIS members do you think will read these comments?

IMHO, it is just childish, and to me, devalues someone's comments when they resort to insults. It's as if you were talking g about Trump or Clinton but referring to them as "idiot" rather than by name. It's simply unnecessary and shows clouded, emotional, judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> The website for the most secure coin in the world only gets a B rating from ssllabs: [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.thenewpou...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.thenewpoundcoin.com)

<comment><USER113> I just checked bitcoin.org as a comparision (A+): [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=bitcoin.org](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=bitcoin.org)

<comment><USER114> If only bitcoin exchanges were actually secure...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> Containing 1 pound of silver in it? No, so it's fake.

</comment><comment><USER116> From my understanding, all money is created as debt. Counterfeits would be an exception. What is the impact of this?

<comment><USER117> If you do it on a large enough scale you'd get inflation as you have more money supply for the same amount of goods so that the money loses value. This would then lead the central bank to raise rates to counteract inflation. This in turn is bad for the economy (more expensive to take out a loan leads to less investment) so you could get a recession. I doubt that you'd be able to inject enough counterfeit money for that, though.

However, most central banks do that on a much larger scale at the moment to get that inflation and it doesn't really work (the Bank of England has stopped that though).

<comment><USER118> This sounds like one of those things that's not a problem but becomes unfixable when it is a problem. Like you say it's the scale required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> What is the difference between counterfeit and "original" coins? Unless they have 1 pound of silver in them they're all fake money.

I think everybody should just accept and use counterfeit coins, if they look like the coins issued by the central bank.</comment>


Why edge cases matter for product success - <AUTHOR> http://weared4.com/blog/why-edge-cases-matter/ <comment><USER2> >As is often the case, getting something that works 75% of the time isn't too hard. But getting to 90% takes a lot of effort. And making it to 98% is a real nightmare.

Amen</comment>


Ask HN: Want to test the market/idea before launch, but how? - <AUTHOR>

We are working on web app for restaurant/cafe/bars and want to test the market.
What we want to achieve? As our product is still in development stage and take at least 30 days to come in beta stage, but We want to show our product/idea to users and bloggers through some kind of screen cast with voice, so that they can have idea about what is product all about and how it will benefit to uses business.
Our secondary objective is to get beta users.
Benefit to user/blogger 1. Get discount on release. 2. Blogger will get coupons so that they can distribute among their readers.
What we did so far? 1. Create the list of potential uses [company info, contact email etc.] 2. Created the list of forums, blogger.
Our questions 1.	Is this a right approach? 2.	How we can create awesome screencast with great voice without full product.
Hoping great answers.
Any help is appreciable. <comment><USER2> The first thing is to actually talk to your potential users. I don't think bloggers are going to be of much help in this phase. You are looking for feedback and want to talk with real users.

I would not spend time creating a screen cast yet. If you have a few screen shots or can just describe the product to them directly. Ideally you would want 10 passionate customers. If you only have 1 or 2, their feedback might drive you in the wrong direction.

As technical people, we would love to just email a few people or post a comment on a blog. But to get great users, you have to engage them. The best way is to go out and physically talk with them. Since your market is restaurant/cafe/bars, you can do it all locally which is great because you can read their body language, watch them use it, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please give more details and describe your idea if you really need any useful help. Otherwise, you will at best get vague answers.

Is your product for restaurant/cafe/bar owners or customers?

If you want to show your idea to restaurant/cafe/bar owners, why do you need a screencast? Just go and talk to them.

It sounds to me like it's too early to talk to bloggers.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. It is for restaurant/cafe/bar owners to get/engage more customers. 2\. Why screencast? so that i can show demo to remote customers as well, also i can place it on my website.

<comment><USER3> Well, if you have local customers, then it might be good to just go and talk to them first and listen to what they have to say. If most of your customers are going to be remote, then you need to first think how are they going to come to your site? Your target users don't seem to be the most web-savvy people.

If you have a budget, there are a few people who make pro screencasts for companies. If you search HN you will find some recommendations.

But I would suggest just make a screencast yourself first. It will help you think through what you want to show and get the script right, which you will need anyway even if you get someone else to make it for you.

Finally, if you have something to show just put it up already and ask people for feedback on the real thing. I know it must be embarrassing if you don't have the most amazing solution yet, but you have to start somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugg, don't do what we did. We basically turned on the PR waaaaaaaaaay to soon.

Get out your pen and paper, draw some screenshots, identify who your customers are. The thing here is that it may be more than one group.

i.e. do you need to sell to both bar owners and their customers? do you need to sell to the vendors? do you need to sell to the umbrella manufacturers guild? (also by selling I mean convince them to do something, not necessarily give you money for stuff)

Figure this business ecosystem out, put it down on a sheet of paper. Then for each of the groups identified, posit a sales pitch. Don't worry if it's terrible. It always is. The idea here is to get a starting point for these people to talk to you. Now go talk to these people.

If you're serious about testing the market, go get Steve Blank's book (whoa, do I sound like a broken record!!!) and go through the worksheets.

If you don't really want to do all the above, then go ahead and post your value prop here.</comment>


Enough with the Programming Puzzles - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/enough-programming-puzzles-ron-cox <comment><USER3> Us, software engineers, start to sound like spoiled kids when it comes to interviewing.

We don't like writing code on the whiteboard, we don't like mind teasers, we don't like programming puzzles, and so on. We complain about everything.

Well, hiring is a difficult problem, and nobody has a universal solution yet. But the truth is that if I want to get a job, I will need eat the humble pie and get out there and try to perform as good as I can to whatever I am asked. If I don't, somebody else will.

However, remember that interview is a two way process, if I don't like the employer's process, then maybe I will not even interview for them. In this case though, I cannot expect them to give me an offer, just because.

<comment><USER4> It seems that other professions have solved this. Nobody is asking lawyers to run a trial on a whiteboard or solve a whodunit mystery in 2 hours. And I don't think that licensing process for lawyers guarantees anything other than the right to practice law (there are pretty bad licensed lawyers out there). Do construction workers draw diagrams of installing drywall in their hiring process? Do plumbers get challenged with the back of cereal box trace-the-pipe puzzle?

There are jobs, which have a similar hiring process. Performance artists actually need to perform to get hired but they do perform their actual work. I.e. they are not playing the anthem of Cambodia on a toy recorder in order to be hired as a death metal band drummer.

<comment><USER5> >I.e. they are not playing the anthem of Cambodia on a toy recorder in order to be hired as a death metal band drummer.

Think about it this way: they are not playing a full playlist on an actual stage with a soundcheck and live audience either. Compared to the real gig they are performing a smaller task in an artificially simplified environment. It is actually very similar to a coding interview.

People often forget that puzzles are not a thing into itself, it's a tool for discovering candidate's style and a springboard for further discussion. I'm not interested in a solution itself as much as in an ability to discuss it, explain it & improve it -- because those are the things that are being done in a workplace on a daily basis.

<comment><USER4> People also forget the goal of the hiring process - finding somebody who can get the work done. I am in the game industry and, luckily, not everybody is doing whiteboard coding and puzzles here, but, out of my anecdotal experience, studios that do it also release pretty crappy games. It could be that springboarding discussion is not selecting very good programmers. It could also be that the management who enforces these practices is not competent to run the studio. I cannot tell either way, just my experience.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what do the studios that don't release crappy games do?

<comment><USER4> Math and general CS (in the sense of "What is IEEE representation of 1.f?" not "The difference between Red-Black and B- trees?") questions. Past experience questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those puzzles might serve an ancillary goal of finding people willing to conform, are good at doing what they are told and have the ability to do unconventional programming tasks on a whim.

All of those are characteristics that the company might be looking for.

In short those tests aren't checking for just aptitude, they are checking for the personality characteristics of people willing to do them and tolerate the absurdity - like a cult.

I once applied as a JavaScript developer to a local company and they gave me a test in Cake PHP. This was after a face-to-face interview with the owner.

I finished most of it but their was one thing I couldn't figure out. His response via email was along the lines of " You really should learn this stuff". This was after answering a bunch of granular questions about JavaScript and passing those preliminary questions.

But I guess its my fault and I "really should learn this stuff" (j/k)

:/

<comment><USER7> These tests are probably designed to check your motivation, not your skill.

If Google is asking questions about manhole covers, you better study about them before an interview. A candidate who can answer such a question would more likely want to badly work for Google. That is probably a better predictor for a good workplace performance than raw skill.

<comment><USER8> It's a good predictor for wanting to work at Google.

It's in no way a good predictor for being able to do good work at Google - <USER2> anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it difficult to reject these puzzles on principle without sounding either bitter or like you simply can't solve them? I can't imagine a single case where this is going to cause a potential employer to re examine these exercises. They'll simply chock you up to being unqualified.

I reckon most jobs simply require you to not be a knob for an hour while someone asks you tricky questions about your worst behaviors. How often, day to day, are you required to explain something bad about yourself in a constructive way? Yet it is as utterly common as programming puzzles.

My supposition is that if that's where the wind is blowing, I'd had damn better face my sail that way. I hate silly problem solving puzzles as much as anyone, but not a shit lot you can do about it when they're the ones holding the keys.

<comment><USER10> Well, I guess you could start your own company. You could even hire anyone who comes in the door claiming to be able to code, although what you'll do with a dozen people who can't even FizzBuzz is beyond me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm actually in the middle of a bunch of interviews right now. The most ridiculous interview process I encountered so far was one that was supposed to be 7 (!!) steps long (that usually takes 3-4 weeks by their own estimates), beginning with a 45 minute HackerRank challenge, then a technical project that was said to take 2-5 hours on average (but the time given was a whole week, so I have my doubts about that estimate), followed by up to 4 Skype calls, and finally an onsite.

The HackerRank challenge consisted of two relatively trivial multiple choice problems, a simple FizzBuzz-level coding problem, and a programming puzzle. And I do mean programming _puzzle_. I consider it a puzzle in the sense that it had very little to do with any classical CS domain I'm aware of (although that may just be an artifact of my own ignorance, but to someone unaware of that domain like myself, it as might as well just be a puzzle) and certainly wasn't anything one would ever encounter in front-end development (I was applying as a front-end engineer). I later found the problem online and here's a thread discussing it for those interested (the company I interviewed with wasn't Google though): [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28967020/check-if- there-e...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28967020/check-if-there-exists- a-circle)

I finished the 2 MC questions and first coding problem within the first 5 minutes, but I wasn't able to finish the programming puzzle in the time remaining (For what it's worth, I was on the right track with my approach, but it took me a lot of trial and error to arrive at that approach, so I didn't have enough time left to finish the implementation). I got my rejection email two days later.

I really question the wisdom of using a programming puzzle like this as a filter in the first step of your interview process (or really, in any step of the interview process for that matter). You're effectively discarding candidates solely based on their inability to solve an esoteric programming puzzle under some arbitrary time constraint.

Although at the end of the day, I'm not that disappointed in this early rejection. If this programming puzzle was a sign of things to come in the next 6 steps of their interview process, I think I may have dodged a bullet. That could have been so many hours of my life that I'd never get back. Good riddance I say.

<comment><USER12> You dismiss this as "esoteric", but that's the whole point, the purpose of a puzzle like this is for you to be unable to map it to something you've done previously or to something you learned in school, and instead to force you to invent an algorithm on your own.

It is the opposite of what the author of the article complains about - "academic", "targeted at cs grads" \- it goes against that. It is an attempt to test problem-solving ability by removing knowledge from the equation. Knowledge can then be tested separately. Fresh CS grads are not going to do better on this problem than a guy who graduated 10 years ago.

In fact, this is the kind of problem given to children (who can't be expected to have CS knowledge, and you don't want to give a big advantage to those who happen to have some) in programming competitions. I would put the difficulty at either easy problem for high schoolers or difficult problem for elementary schoolers (this doesn't mean it's super-easy, these problems have to be relatively hard or the smartest kids would all solve everything).

I am not sure why so many developers dismiss the value of this and are in fact often actively hostile to any suggestion that it might be ONE of the indicators of programming ability.

I do agree that the time constraint was probably too strict and favors people who've solved stuff like this before, mainly due to them knowing they should try to solve this with a pen and paper or in their head, then just code the solution once they've found it. Trial and error through code is a huge waste of time and this was probably your problem.

<comment><USER11> > I am not sure why so many developers dismiss the value of this and are in > fact often actively hostile to any suggestion that it might be ONE of the > indicators of programming ability.

No disagreement there. I certainly wasn't trying to dismiss the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems never encountered as an indicator for programming ability and general intelligence _completely_. However, I certainly don't believe it's a _good enough_ indicator to use as the sole basis for simply rejecting otherwise perfectly capable candidates before you've even talked to them.

I'm also of the opinion that interviews should strive to assess how well candidates can perform on the specific position you're hiring for (that is the main purpose of interviews, is it not?). In my own case (I was applying for a front-end engineer), and in the case of most other engineering positions, I don't believe puzzle solving is a very _useful_ indicator for that purpose, because an overwhelming majority of engineering tasks involve applying the scientific method and engineering knowledge to solve variations of well-known engineering problems in their specific fields.

EDIT: Another point that I forgot to mention: If you are in fact interested in a candidate's ability to solve novel problems they've never encountered, at least do a better job of ensuring the problem you give them is _actually novel_. I found the StackOverflow thread for the problem they gave me in about 30 seconds of Googling. By not ensuring the problem novel enough that searching for it won't do you any good, you're going to be disproportionately passing dishonest candidates who would simply cheat to get through this part of your process. Certainly that can't be the result you're looking for.

<comment><USER12> Regarding the first, I think they basically do this to test how "programming smart" someone is. Like my boss tells me when I interview, "determine potential". However, I agree that this shouldn't disqualify someone for a more technical kind of job. For me it is more of a "if he is really smart we should hire him despite the fact he is perhaps unqualified, he will easily learn" thing. The disqualifying questions are easier than this one.

Regarding the second, I agree completely. This problem is good because it doesn't give an advantage to rote memorization of basic CS from college (unlike asking about red-black trees etc), but when stolen from the internet and reused becomes bad because it gives an advantage to something worse - googling questions and memorizing answers.

I assume (or hope) Google switches up the problems they use all the time and hopefully doesn't use automated testing (because I care how someone thinks, not just whether they produce the solution in X minutes), but since you interviewed at a different company perhaps it is a cargo cult effect: Google has some of the smartest programmers and they asked this, so obviously we should also ask the same thing! Cargo culting is extremely common in IT in less-established companies, my workplace is not immune to it either. Pick things a super-successful company does that require almost zero investment, effort or true change, and copy those. It is ridiculous.

Of course, the things these companies really do right, they are too much effort, let's just copy them in superficial ways and hope for the best!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the problems with coding challenges is that I suspect you miss out on a lot of potential candidates. I did a round of interviews recently and one wanted me to do an online test and then a puzzle.

I did the online test, received the puzzle, and in the intervening period I was interviewed and offered a job by someone else. When I rang the first place to tell them the guy was very upset because it had taken so long to find someone who could pass the test!

Seems to me if you're that desperate for candidates then don't assume you're the only company in the world.

<comment><USER14> I would have to largely agree with this based on my own experience, and I've been on both sides of the fence.

The best interviews I've had was when I was invited to come work with the team after a few meet and greets. It allows all parties to relax a little and get a taste of what working together would be like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do people applying for other roles get treated to tests like this? Seems peculiar to IT afaict. Having worked in IT for > 25 years, I would have thought my track record would speak for itself, but still I'm treated as though I've been lying and cheating my way through my career. It's not like just asking questions, either: it's a test of basic aptitude and (like the author) I'm at the stage of refusing to do them.

<comment><USER16> There's assessment centers for most decent entry level management jobs which usually involve grouping tasks by importance and team oriented tasks. They can last a day, sometimes two. Typical consulting gigs have case studies and market size guesstimating (the dreaded how many lawnmowers in NYC etc.)

Typical office secretary jobs here require a work sample so you'll get a typical task for the job and have to do it on the spot (write a letter to someone, translate a text). My current job (academia) required a somewhat simple test to see if I have a decent understanding of method/statistics and the programming test was answering a couple of questions :P

In logistics you usually have to reason through a couple of typical work situations.

After entry level...it's usually just an interview and references.

<comment><USER17> _After entry level...it 's usually just an interview and references._

Except it's not, that's the problem. But this is not a matter of incompetence on the part of the employer, but of deliberate and calculated policy.

<comment><USER16> Just to clarify. I was referring to the non-programming jobs. So for an entry level management job you'll do the assessment center and jump through all sorts of hoops. For your next job it's usually a basic discussion. It'll get more rigid again higher up as there will be a vetting process etc. But beyond entry level there's usually no skill tests in the domains I know outside of IT. I think that's the main point. Most people could accept all sorts of programming and possibly even logic tests for entry level IT jobs but after you've shipped software it becomes a bit ridiculous in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what the solution to hiring is, but I don't think it is as simple as just talking to people. While I have not been involved in too many new hires, I have known many people that come across as knowledgeable in conversation but produce pretty terrible code.

I think coding challenges provide some value, but it can be a but much to expect candidates to spend hour's of their time early in the process

</comment><comment><USER19> Surely there's a middle-ground between puzzles designed to trip you up, and puzzles designed to show you have some baseline chops. There's a lot of people who can't walk their talk.

At one place I work at, we're trying to get some senior-level PHP devs... and we're getting some applicants that can't even conceptually do FizzBuzz...

<comment><USER20> Its not usually that difficult to work out if people know what they are talking about.

<comment><USER10> Some people are _really_ good at bullshitting their way through stuff. You need to make them actually do stuff to discover they flounder.

And since you can't have them do anything meaningful in an interview (there isn't enough time), anything you ask them to do will be a silly "programming puzzle".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As an interviewer I am upfront with our hiring process and that part of it is we ask candidates to do a "exercise" after the first face to face meeting. This exercise is crafted to be representative of the job we are trying to fill and is followed up by a second face to face code review session of the code.

The key of the exercise isn't necessarily to complete the whole task (though often people do as the exercises are interesting) but to provide a discussion piece for the code review session. Candidates are told this so that they don't feel like they have to put too much work into it (2 hours is suggested).

The code review session is key, walking through someones code and discussing decisions and trade offs. It provides a layered insight into their smarts, communication skills and thought processes. It is the closest I've gotten to actually working with someone in the interview process.

And isn't that what both parties are looking for?

</comment><comment><USER22> So I guess we know the answer to the "How would you react if assigned a task you didn't enjoy?" question. A: Rather than spend two hours getting the job done, an hour is spent doing a write-up on why the task wasn't done.

A job, any job, will involve thousands of hours with at least a few hundred of them on tasks you really do not appreciate. A candidate not willing to suffer for a couple hours during the interview probably wouldn't have lasted very long anyway.

<comment><USER13> > A job, any job, will involve thousands of hours with at least a few hundred > of them on tasks you really do not appreciate.

But you get paid to do those tasks. And remember that those 2 hours are an estimate, which means it'll probably take longer. Then multiply that by the number of interviews you have and you can quickly see why it becomes unfair rather than 'lazy'.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes you have to work on spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Typical LinkedIn "thought leader", didn't Google et al abandon brainteasers over a year ago?

<comment><USER23> The article isn't talking about brain teasers. Google did indeed banish them, but now they've switched to 4-5 interviews where you're asked a short coding problem.

The problems themselves aren't difficult and given the time constraint, you can fit the answer in the height of one whiteboard. The trick is that you have to be fast, optimal and correct (i.e. syntax counts). From my experience, you should be able to complete each problem in about 20 minutes - i.e. a good enough solution that the interviewer moves on.

The article is right: there are books and books on doing these toy problems with array manipulation, tree traversals, sort/search and so on. If you did a TopCoder SRM every night for a few months, you would probably ace most of these interviews.

But this is the issue: the interviews basically test how well you prepared. They don't simulate a work environment and I don't think I was ever asked any serious questions about my work experience/research beyond chit-chat. Given that I was applying for a specialist computer vision role, that was a bit surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if the author didn't know enough about the company to know if he wanted to do an online coding test, then how was he certain that the content wasn't relevant to what the company was looking for?

</comment><comment><USER25> I think a candidate needs to have both algorithmic and software design skills. Companies put a lot of emphasis on the former skill, ignoring the latter, which imo should equally be tested.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think it is a very fair point that if you have to use a puzzle maybe you're not attracting the right candidates.

<comment><USER20> You are certainly putting off some candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well done for replying back with a reasoned response for not participating. I have done this at a few places. I hope if enough people do it people will get rid of these interview techniques.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you want to find out if a programmer can actually do the job, then it seems to me that the way forward is to have them do something that actually resembles the job.

In the high-end cooking world, it's not uncommon to do one of two things when looking to hire a new cook:

1) Make me a dish. Present the chef with the kitchen, and possibly a specific main ingredient(s), and have them make the best dish they can with that ingredient. Sometimes this is also under some kind of time constraint, to test pressure under fire, but doesn't have to be (great chefs might take weeks to develop a new recipe after all).

2) The "stage". The kitchen takes on the chef temporarily for a short period, where they will actually work on different portions of the line, so that the employer can see both how they perform in real time and where their strengths lie. This can be as little as a single shift, or up to a month or more at some very, very high end kitchens like Thomas Keller's. Crucially as well, this is generally _paid_ (it'd actually be illegal otherwise), so the prospective hiree can actually afford to dedicate that kind of time.

Now some of this is similar to stuff that some tech companies do already. But I think they often miss crucial elements that makes this actually work in a way that's not painful for both parties.

The "make me a dish" method for instance, superficially resembles the infamous "sit down at our computer and code a thing" tests I've read of many times. But there are key differences. Tooling is a pain point in programming that doesn't so much exist in cooking (in fact part of this test can be making sure the prospective cook is familiar with all the basic tools). Sitting in at a foreign editor/IDE/language etc. is likely to be more stressful than is really accurate to how one can expect a new coder to perform in the real world. The simple solution is "bring your own knives." Let the coder use their own machine, or at least give them time to set up a basic version of their favorite tools.

The other thing about "make me a dish" that's missing from programming equivalents that is I think most important is _creativity_. "Make me a dish" isn't about just proving you can cook, it's about proving you can _create_. And isn't that something we want from great programmers as well? Generally when I see and read about these tasks their very proscribed: there's a specific spec/demand/puzzle, and often with the expectation it will be solved in a particular way. One test task I was given once actually even specified what data format I was supposed to use to communicate between back and front ends. What about a mini-hackathon/jam approach instead? Give me a subject or a data source and a bit of time, and see what I can come with?

The "stage" as well is something I think is underconsidered with tech companies. Companies spend thousands of dollars on hiring practices and recruiters and advertising, but they can't just do a paid trial period instead? It makes no sense. If you think you've got a promising candidate, just take them on for a couple weeks, point them at a relatively low-hanging fruit task on the issues board, and see how they do.

Alternately, maybe just accept a fucking risk now and again. If the candidate seems to know what they're talking about in the interview, maybe just hire the fucking person, and if they suck, fire them. This is the same stricture and risk 90% of hiring practices are under, and somehow the economy hasn't collapsed yet so I am gonna tentatively suggest it seems to work.

Sometimes the path of least resistance is the easier, cheaper way.

<comment><USER28> > If the candidate seems to know what they're talking about in the interview, > maybe just hire the fucking person, and if they suck, fire them.

In some countries, employment laws are so crazy, that it's almost impossible to fire someone willy nilly because they "suck". You have to give them written warnings, re-"skill" them, move them to different departments, etc. It's such a pain in the ass and then they still take you to court for unfair dismissal.

<comment><USER29> Even in countries with labor laws, people usually have a 3 to 6 months trial periods where they can be fired at will.

I think the true deterrent is not the law, but that it is rather expensive to train someone for 2 months then have to fire him/her, and find someone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do you really need to test whether a candidate is technically competent if they have a degree from a well respected university like MIT, etc? You already know he has the discipline and academic requisites.

Interviewing someone at that point, I'd expect the employer would be more interested to see if they're a good fit for the company culture and not waste time on academic trivialities.

<comment><USER30> Well, Laszlo Bock claims Google looked at the data and found zero correlation between having a degree from a well respected university and being useful at Google

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman- how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html)

So no, using a degree isn't useful for hiring engineers apparently

<comment><USER28> That's pretty weird though.

Is using a degree useful for hiring medical doctors, mechanical engineers, actuaries? It's really hard to believe that only Computer Science as a field has a problem where it's churning out people who are technically incapable of programming to such a degree that you need to explicitly test them in interviews through "puzzles".

<comment><USER30> Maybe they all have that problem and no one has ever bother to actually check the data?

I know for me and interviewing programmers my personal experience is the degree doesn't matter. I've met plenty of degreed "engineers" who couldn't program for shit from schools like MIT and Harvard. I've also met some amazing programmers from those same places. I don't know what make the difference except possible love of the activity. Not sure how to asses that in an interview or whether it correlates better with outcomes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RouterSploit – Router Exploitation Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reverse-shell/routersploit <comment><USER2> This one is not for routers, but every windows admin should be aware if you don't use two factor auth your password hashes can be extracted from memory from every windows computer on your network that you logged into (until reboot).

[https://github.com/funkandwagnalls/ranger](https://github.com/funkandwagnalls/ranger)

"Ranger is a command-line driven attack and penetration testing tool, which has the ability to use an instantiated catapult server to deliver capabilities against Windows Systems. As long as a user has -ONE- set of credentials or a hash set (NTLM, LM, LM:NTLM) he or she can gain access to systems that are apart of the trust.

Using this capability a security professional can extract credentials out of memory in clear-text, access SAM tables, run commands, execute PowerShell scripts, Windows Binaries, and other tools. At this time the tool bypasses the majority of IPS vendor solutions unless they have been custom tuned to detect it. The tool was developed using our home labs in an effort to support security professionals doing legally and/or contractually supported activities."

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the shout out. This is Dev from the team that just released Ranger at BSides Charm this weekend. Happy to get Chris and Jon involved if anyone has some questions.

<comment><USER2> I was there. Great tool and presentation!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Much appreciated :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great - exactly like metasploit. Why not just build a module for metasploit?

<comment><USER5> same question, but indeed looks great

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone tell me why this shouldn't be a set of modules for metasploit? I appreciate the effort put in, the python/ruby argument and that the MIPS_LE shellcode for meterpreter breaks on a lot of boxes, but is there a specific reason why the wheel is being reinvented here instead of putting efforts into extending and improving what's already there?

</comment><comment><USER7> looks really neat. nothing for my router (Actiontec) unfortunately

also, i had to remove the 'belkin' exploits from the scanner because i kept getting 'connection reset by peer' errors

<comment><USER8> Don't you mean fortunately? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> anyone tried it with the new Windows Bash?

<comment><USER10> Sorry, too busy coding bots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Incredible

</comment><comment><USER12> Any good tut's on using this for noobs?

<comment><USER13> In the least abrasive way possible – If you're a self-described 'noob', I feel like investigating router exploits is going to be more confusing than anything. Embedded devices can be quite different from what you're used to.

With that out of the way – the Usage section of the README is pretty approachable and about as straightforward as router testing gets: [https://github.com/reverse- shell/routersploit#usage](https://github.com/reverse-shell/routersploit#usage)

<comment><USER14> Without wanting to encourage script kiddies in any way, but how would a noob go from noob to informed? Genuine question, I promise no snark intended :-)

<comment><USER15> 1) Read documentation and try to understand.

2) Google what you don't understand.

3) Repeat.

Obviously, consuming all sorts of books and general information on the subject you wanna learn about helps, and can complement/substitute Googling.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Do the Biggest Companies Keep Getting Bigger? It's How They Spend on Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-keep-getting-bigger-its-how-they-spend-on-tech-1532610001 <comment><USER2> I wonder if there is a deeper structure/nature to business growth and popularity, something akin to the Matthew effect [1] ("to everyone who has more will be given") or power laws.

People have limited energy to store and rank objects, so they settle on one or two per field/subject, and all future energy goes into maintaining that categorization.

An example would be "Hulk Hogan", even though I am not interested in wrestling, I do know that name. If I am similar to others, such as journalists, this would explain why that name is getting bigger and bigger: people just add on energy on the current most popular choice.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)

<comment><USER3> You may appreciate the book Scale[1], by Geoffrey West. I don't know if I completely buy all aspects of the book, but he looks at organisms, cities, and companies and suggests that there are certain fundamental scaling properties of these collections. IMHO, there are some fascinating ideas here, although the book seems more like a collection of papers with a bit of editing.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation- Sustainabi...](https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation- Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Large companies get larger due to the inefficiency of larger companies. It's like trying to get another 5 mph after hitting 200 mph.

After hitting 201-500 employees, it becomes almost impossible to avoid politics, bureaucracy, wasted time communicating, oversight, management, etc.

Based on a graph that showed peak productivity with a team size of 6 ([https://www.getflow.com/blog/optimal-team-size-workplace- pro...](https://www.getflow.com/blog/optimal-team-size-workplace- productivity)), one layer of management results in 43 employees (1 CEO + 6 managers/executives + 6 * 6 individual contributors). Two layers results in 259 employees (1 CEO + 6 executives + 6 * 6 managers + 6 * 6 * 6 individual contributors). More than two layers adds more inefficiency/employee than is taken away and such a downward trend continues.

If a fictional 4.6 team members is used, those numbers become 26.76 and 124.096.

<comment><USER5> Uh, the article is about revenue, not headcount.

<comment><USER4> Increased revenue among larger companies is usually due to either having a monopoly, or financial engineering. In the case of larger tech companies, it's a maintained monopoly (and maybe financial engineering) combined with a massive increase in the number of online users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://archive.is/B9klj](http://archive.is/B9klj)

</comment><comment><USER7> Clickbait antidote: "IT spending that goes into hiring developers and creating software owned and used exclusively by a firm is the key competitive advantage. [...] Today's big winners went all in"

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not even true. The "biggest" companies still use the same software (SAP, DB/2, ...) that other companies use for finance, legal, logistics, ...

Example article: [http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2012/11/why-does-microsoft- hq...](http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2012/11/why-does-microsoft-hq-use-sap- instead-of-microsoft-dynamics-erp/)

(not sure if still accurate in 2017, but I think it is)

<comment><USER9> At a company the size of Microsoft, the software they use to run their corporate HR and financial analytics on is of little consequence - the key is the software/platform that they sell to their customers, IE Azure, AWS etc.

The amount of resources that go in to SAP, while large, are a rounding error compared to the resources spent on building a compute platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Companies that got big, continue to get bigger, instead of instantly stopping once big. News at eleven."

I'm only half-joking. The companies are big to begin with because they did something better than their competitors. Also they can attract and afford to hire the best in key roles.

</comment><comment><USER10> It has little to do with tech and much to do with market power, political influence, and scale economies.

<comment><USER11> came here to say this. economies of scale

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a really strange, naval-gazing article. "Company builds tech needed to serve their business." News at 11. I keep looking for some nugget of actual wisdom, but haven't found it yet. There's a point about competitors trying to build from scratch + competitive advantage of being able to extend a technology into a new line of business, but none of that is a particularly new concept; incumbents who are smart enough to move into new businesses and well- capitalized are hard to beat, color me shocked.

<comment><USER13> Sure nothing here is "new" but its amazing how many companies/people/organizations are flabbergasted by a lack of growth whiles not not investing in themselves.

<comment><USER14> There seems to be this weird obsession in a lot of the corporate world that the way to grow is to cut spending. This increases profit% in the short to mid term, at the cost of actual absolute profit, especially in the longer term.

Shrug.

<comment><USER15> This is not quite correct in any company I've seen besides companies that were literally about to go under (and to try to save money to pay off creditors more or less) - companies that are struggling to grow cut spending in order to free up revenue to pivot into more lucrative revenue streams. The usual innovators' dilemma problems historically happened on much longer timelines prior to modern software and even still plenty of businesses are basically coasting on reputation alone (it's taken McDonald's how long to really embrace technology? Now take a look at Chik Fil-A and how they've built their brand and user engagement combined with a solid, distinct product suite). Most companies find a business model and fail to grow I've noticed because their leadership is simply... not very innovative. Everyone and their dog knows to cut costs and to acquire companies to get into new customerbases / markets when you've got the means, but it takes a bit of guts / risk-taking by leaders to focus and _execute_ on established companies on key initiatives such as Apple with the iPod in the early 2000s. Most companies (especially b2b ones that are the typical company IMO) are basically lifestyle companies that exist to give leaders a cushy living and a great deal of them will simply sell their companies instead of working their tail off to try to make things work. For those companies, by the time business starts to turn bad it's basically over and you're just fighting against the inertia that has already built against you (see: Sears, K-Mart). This isn't to say that running companies is easy, but many, many businesses are pretty darn low-risk (public storage facilities is a great example) and the industry is very safe from disruption by technology either through past rent-seeking or by intrinsic factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heavy-weight regulations like GDPR also help to keep status quo.

</comment><comment><USER17> s/Tech/Lobbyists

</comment><comment><USER18> Big companies get bigger because of market consolidation. Competition is a lie. News at 11.

<comment><USER19> Competition is so real that big companies spend large amounts on market consolidation, just to escape it.

<comment><USER18> They still escaped it. Competition was the driving force for companies to become big and monopolistic. The "intended" effect of the market resulted in the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have no idea what you're talking about</comment>


What is the least expensive way to annihilate humanity? - <AUTHOR> http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13907/what-is-the-least-expensive-way-to-annihilate-humanity

<comment><USER2> I would say to just sit back and wait. It is happening naturally.</comment>


The Cramer Rao Bound: A Theorem that Limits Google AdSense Participants - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2009/10/google-adsense-channels-ids-and-the-cramer-rao-inequality/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an older paper of ours that shows how the Cramer Rao Inequality (a famous theorem of information theory and statistics) limits what Google AdSense participants can sense (and therefor what they can do). Google AdSense is, of course, an exceptional example of a market with a very clever design (or mechanism).</comment>


The Risks of Water Insecurity - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-risks-of-water-insecurity/ <comment><USER2> While the article mostly provides a few links, it's a topic that is worth looking at a little bit.

There is a lot to discover, from the fact that the water quality in the US as a whole is not great for a first world nation and the fact that some areas in the US where people actually live have water which is actually dangerous to consume (Flint).

Did you know that the several aqueducts in California carry naturally occurring asbestos and may be responsible for cancers ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7395855](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7395855)) ?</comment>


Virtual Autogrpaph - <AUTHOR> https://virtual-autograph.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Dan Gittik just started working at google, and geeked this out as his first side project: Getting a virtual autograph from a virtual world celeb When I started working at Google, I had the sudden realisation that I am working at the same company as people like Ken Thompson, Vint Cerf and Bram Moolenaar. These are people whom I'd ask for an autograph, if I ever get to meet them. So I thought: why not! And what's even better than an autograph on a piece of paper, is a cryptographic signature on an actual executable file. Imagine how cool it'd be to say "Hey Bram, can you please sign my vim?", or "Ken Thompson, oh my God! Mind writing 'To my dearest friend, Dan' on my gcc?" That's what Virtual Autograph is about: you upload a file, write a dedication, and we email it to your hero to sign. Once they do, you get an email with your very own copy of, say, tcpdump, signed by Vint Cerf himself - so now you can, uh, sniff packets, just like before, but be dorkily happy about it.</comment>


Folding Home Reaches Exascale: 1,500B,000,000 Operations Per Second for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15661/folding-at-home-reaches-exascale-1000000000000000000-operations-per-second-for-covid-19 <comment><USER2> For comparison, then ENTIRE top 500 supercomputer list Rmax only adds up to 1.646 exaFLOPS</comment>


'Done is better than perfect' + 5 other habits of highly productive people - <AUTHOR> http://markhayes.ca/2011/11/26/6-habits-of-highly-productive-people/

<comment><USER2> Some good ones there, I especially like 'micro-manage yourself,' but I don't agree with stop multitasking. I know recent research shows that it can lower IQ but I've never had a problem with multitasking.</comment>


Ask HN: What IDE do you use on your tablet? (Ios or android) - <AUTHOR>

I am more interested is JS environment, but if you use IDEs for other languages feel free to list them. <comment><USER2> For Android, I've been using DroidEdit and DroidScript (and DroidScript lets you compile Javascript to an apk, without the hassle of setting up Cordova).

I also have Bit Web Server for php.

I haven't found a good option for Javascript console debugging on Android. (not linking to your PC to debug like Chrome does, I mean using the JS console on my phone)

My problem is the lack of a clip-on physical keyboard. I'm looking for a clip- on keyboard like the way the Moga controller clips on to my phone. The iControlpad2 would have been nice, but that project turned out to be a fraud. I have a qqtech mini bluetooth keyboard, but without a clip-on capability it's hard to use on the subway.

I saw clip-on keyboards that work only with my phone (Samsung Galaxy S4), but that's no good because I'm upgrading soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is QPython on Android that is ok. What I found frustrating with Android is that the python implementation of QPython is restricted to QPython. For example, I can't access to the Python REPL from emacs on my tablet. I saw some SSH clients for android (for example: Juice SSH). I am tempted to set up SSH on my computer and ssh there from my tablet, so I can have access to my whole environment from Android; the only problem with that is that it depends too much on having access to Internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> For Python on iOS you should try Pythonista[0]. It's $7 and it's really good. I use it on my phone more often than my iPad but it runs great on both.

[0]: [http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz- software.com/pythonista/)

</comment><comment><USER5> JQT for J runs great on Android, for anyone into J.

</comment><comment><USER6> Diet Coda

Koder

iSSH</comment>


Ask HN: How do your remote companies handle problem of sharing knowledge? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone!
We've been discussing today on our retro meeting the problem of sharing knowledge across the company. The problem is that we have a lot of tools which we can do that, eg. Google Docs, Github Wiki, a blog, Dropbox etc. and it's hard to tell when to use which one as each of them has some pros and cons.
I wonder if this problem is already solved by some kind of tool which I was unable to find, which provides some kind of "Knowledge Hub" where you can find everything that is being shared across the company?
How does your company solve this problem? <comment><USER2> As the CEO of Atlassian, I'm obviously biased, but you should really check out Confluence. With 10s of thousands of companies using it for this exact purpose we have deep experience solving this type of problem.

Confluence provides templates for things like retros. It allows embedding of files, videos. Concurrent editing currently being rolled out.

Big thing with collaboration is ensuring things are public by default, which is not the case with Google docs and others.

You need it to be WYSIWYG for non-technical people to use, which rules out GitHub Wiki and others of that ilk.

Happy to answer any other questions about usage if you try it out.

Scott

<comment><USER3> Confluence is great, it just gets incredibly expensive rather quickly. Self- hosting the $10 version is probably the best route, however, it's fairly resource intensive and seems rather cumbersome (damn you, java) if you have issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about a simple phpBB or vBulletin forum?

It's a familiar interface, supports conversations, pinned topics, attachments, rich text, etc.

I've thought about this approach before and I think it may be a decent one.

</comment><comment><USER5> We are a 3 year old startup and have had product/marketing/ops in San Francisco and engineering in Bangalore all this while. We use Google Docs power users and spontaneous communication happens through Slack and calls. Between these, most of our knowledge sharing needs are covered. Though as the team grows, Slack is becoming too noisy making it easy to miss messages, so we are rethinking that a bit.

<comment><USER6> Slack and HC are great but the noise aspect of Slack is both the magic behind their growth but also the weakness behind the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am currently researching this as well. We use Confluence at my day job, and that is ugly but fairly effective, but also relatively expensive (also I just don't like any of Atlassian's software design).

If there aren't any other modern tools out there this is RIPE for a new SaaS.

<comment><USER8> We are working on Nuclino ([https://www.nuclino.com](https://www.nuclino.com)), a lightweight real-time wiki offered as a SaaS. It would be great to get your feedback if you are researching this area!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've long thought that an internal deployment of Quora would be great for this. Too bad they don't sell that.

<comment><USER6> Confluence Questions is basically Quora without the red design elements and network effected social growth model that will need to be driven by ads.

[https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/questions](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/questions)</comment></comment>


The curse of the gifted programmer (ESR's email to Torvalds) - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/2000/0824/a/esr-sharing.php3 <comment><USER2> The curse of the gifted programmer is apparently the need to deal with occasional direct emails from Eric Raymond.

<comment><USER3> HURR I DONT LIKE ERIC RAYMOND PLS VOTE ME UP TOO.

1) Ignores the content of the submission 2) Ignores the other discussion comments 3) Unsupported personal insult 4) Upvoted to 'best comment' position.

Look, pretend it's about someone else - Ray Monderic or someone - doesn't the idea that early formalising your development procedures pays benefits for other people and eases the transition from a system small enough that the leader can manage it to a system big enough that they can't have some merit?

<comment><USER4> Like it or not, Eric S Raymond is to the hacker community what Louis Althusser is to French philosophers. Or Stanley Aronowitz to pomo sociology. Or Mark Foley to the Republican caucus. Or Crystal Gail Mangum to feminist bloggers. Every time an outsider first realizes how this guy was universally accepted as one of our leaders once we've taken a collective kick in the gut. The sooner people forget about this clown the better.

Your parent is an unsupported personal insult, you're not wrong about that, but if it discourages others from advertising esr essays it's legitimate and meaningful.

<comment><USER3> Your post is _also_ an unsupported personal insult and you also feel that's enough justification, that I shouldn't read anything by ESR solely because you don't like him, and you are also being upvoted for it.

It's bizarre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This line of ESR's

> As Linux grows, there will come a time when your raw talent is not enough.

is the key bit.

...and I think it was proven true several years back, when Linus found it increasing hard to keep on top of dealing with the inflow of bug fixes, patches, features, etc.

Raw talent is never enough for the really big problems. _Proper_ use of routines and procedures are a brain amplifying technology.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and so he moved on to an easier to manage project by starting to write git from scratch.

<comment><USER7> Git, internally, is very simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We saw this earlier this month: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167754>

<comment><USER9> yes. I don't mind dups in general- good to get a refresher once in a while- but when it wasn't even a whole month ago...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Eric Raymond comes off patronizing with his "listen to grandpa" bit. He shrouds his argument in a weird "Unix tradition" argument, and appeals to heritage, culture and other nonsense as if computing was his village and he the elder.

<comment><USER6> I think the intent was to make Linus feel like the child he was (is?). I thought it worked. Linus is quite patronizing in practically all of his e-mails, so I don't see why others wouldn't return the favor.

<comment><USER11> > _I think the intent was to make Linus feel like the child he was_

At the time the email was written, Linus was 30.

> _Linus is quite patronizing in practically all of his e-mails_

Maybe so, but -- for me at least -- Linus has earned more of a right to be patronising than ESR has.

<comment><USER10> Who voted down this guy?

Linus earned his stripes; 30, 20 or 10 years old, the man delivered a world- class piece of software.

Patronizing him is just pulling non-existent rank so ESR doesn't feel like a fish out of water. Remember, while Linus oversaw the hottest piece of Unix software to come in decades, Eric Raymond was making a living off of "seniority" and "lore".

Eric Raymond is the spokesperson of an "in-crowd" whose membership he didn't earn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> (2000)

<comment><USER7> ESR's deeper point is still valid. Take away Linux and Linus and what remains is that you should not try to tackle problems with genius alone.

His point, BTW, was valid since well before Linux was born. Or Linus, or ESR.

<comment><USER12> It is customary to tag articles that are year(s) out of date with their year.

<comment><USER7> Oh... Well reminded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The general point that sooner or later raw ability won't carry someone is worthwhile.

I am curious whether splitting drivers early is a symptom of this.

I've personally seen too much code sharing as a more symptom of hubris than too little code sharing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why link to a loose copy?

why not the hundreds of mailing list archive where you can read the prequel, or the followup?

<comment><USER15> Torvalds never really followed up, with just one paragraph a lot later in the thread: [http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.h...](http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.html) "On the whole, people tend to _want_ to share, because it ends up being the easier "quick hack" in many cases. So I'm not worried about that part overmuch. I'm worried about people who share even when it doesn't make sense. And I'm worried about people having bad interfaces, which makes even sensible sharing end up as a experiment in horror. That's why I'm so un-interested in the "let's share" argument. I don't think that is where the problems are. "

The more interesting "follow-up" is historical, when kernel development started using BitKeeper and then git, instead of Linus' email inbox.

<comment><USER13> But that reply actually doesn't sound at all like someone blinded by their own ability but rather someone thinking very keenly about where the problems are likely to be.

Linus can come off as smart but an asshole in person. But despite this, it seems like his smart extends somewhat into smart insights about human nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ESR doesn't have a clue.

Linus has at least two to rub together.

Why do you quote ESR as though he's some demi-god? He's a freak who takes credit for other people's work without so much as a citation.

<comment><USER17> Can you please justify your unsubstantiated ad-hominem attacks on ESR?

Also, show us why ESR doesn't have a clue.

<comment><USER18> Shouldn't the onus be on ESR and any of his supporters to demonstrate why he _does_ have a clue?

<comment><USER19> I think the fact that Linus eventually took his advise and works that way now is a strong indicator of ESR being correct. Git is the prime example of ESR being right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ESR is wrong, Linus is right. The letter should be read in context, and it demonstrates the blunder of ESR.

Here is Linus' letter on which ESR responded: [http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.h...](http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.html)

And here are Linus' points, in short: <http://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/12></comment>


Ask HN: How to best handle "unlimited" use tiers in a SaaS? - <AUTHOR> Of course, "unlimited" doesn't mean "infinite".  Say I have an app that lets users upload their own documents.  I don't want to cap their uploads -- although perhaps, starting out, this is the best way to go -- as there is a potential upsell opportunity for each document they've uploaded (plus it would just be annoying).<p>What are some strategies for preventing users from abusing my database capacities?  I don't want to become another Google Docs repository for everything on their harddrive.  Some ideas I had were:<p>-enforcing a minimum time limit between uploads<p>-capping them at a certain amount until I can do a manual admin override<p>-making the user "unlock" more uploads by performing other actions on the site (thus sort of implicitly verifying that they're a real user) <comment><USER2> What about having a maximum file size? If you are a site for documents, user's probably don't have any reason to upload a 3 GB file.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I'll be enforcing a max file size (it's only for text-based documents). I guess my bigger concern is spam. Allowing a user to upload an "unlimited" amount of data is a DOS vector, especially since I'm the sole dev. So I'll need to do some sort of curtailing, but hopefully the kind that would be invisible to anyone using the site for its normal purpose.</comment></comment>